Reprints Constantine #7-12 (December 2013-May 2014). The Cult of Cold Flame is coming for Constantine and using all his weapons against him! When faced with danger, Constantine might have to take up the old adage…if you can’t beat them, join them! Plus, Earth is attacked by the Crime Syndicate and magic is being collected by Felix Faust. Constantine finds himself forced to assemble a new Justice League Dark team to combat it for the life of Zatanna!

Written by Ray Fawkes with illustrations by Aco, Szymon Kudranski, and Beni Lobel, Constantine 2: Blight ties in with DC Comics’ Forever Evil storyline. Following Constantine 1: The Spark and the Flame, this collection ties in with issues of Justice League Dark, Trinity of Sin: Pandora, and Trinity of Sin: Phantom Stranger, and Constantine #9-12 have also been collected in the Forever Evil: Blight collection.

Constantine was a comic on the fence for me. I had never been that big of a Hellblazer fan but with the TV series coming out and Constantine’s reintroduction to the DC Universe, I had some renewed interest…unfortunately, this collection really blew it.

One problem that I have with comics nowadays is that you often can’t pick up one random issue and understand what is going on because almost all stories are part of a bigger story now. I can accept this, but if I pick up a collection of comics, I hope to understand what is going on within the collection. Constantine 2: Blight is a mess in that sense.

Constantine #10

The first part of the story continues Constantine’s battle with the Cult of the Cold Flame. It is alright, there are some rather generic mystical fights which seek to confuse by having “mystic talk” to cover up for plot, but it does round out Constantine 1: The Spark and the Flame which ended in a cliffhanger. The second part of this collection is garbage.

I suppose I don’t really know if the story presented in Constantine 2: Blight is garbage since DC gave no context to it. I picked up the collection not even knowing that the “Blight” storyline in Forever Evil was a whole crossover storyline and the book gives no help in that aspect. One minute Constantine is realizing there is something wrong in the world of magic and the next issue he’s fighting in Central Park with a whole new team of people…there is no lead-up no explanation that there are issues that the reader isn’t privy to in the collection. With an actual storyline that flows issue to issue it is detrimental that the collection explains what happened in the missing issues…or it isn’t really a collection.

I’m suspecting if you pick up the next volume of Constantine that the cliffhanger at the end of Constantine #12 is already solved somewhere in Forever Evil: Blight…but I may never know. I’m a sucker for collections and will continue to read them, and there is a good chance that I will pick up Constantine 3 someday, but I feel rather burned by this volume. Steer clear of Constantine 2: Blight (or at least the second half of it) and just pick up Forever Evil: Blight. Constantine 2: Blight is followed by Constantine 3: The Voice in the Fire.

Follow me on Twitter @JPRoscoe76! Loves all things pop-culture especially if it has a bit of a counter-culture twist. Plays video games (basically from the start when a neighbor brought home an Atari 2600), comic loving (for almost 30 years), and a true critic of movies. Enjoys the art house but also isn't afraid to let in one or two popular movies at the same time.